Bill Condon Talks About Franchise and the Fansites!

In an interview with About.com, Director Bill Condon address what it was like shooting two films at once ans well as why we took on this project.

You shoot both parts at the same time. What does that do in your mind as a director trying to figure out and concentrate scene to scene, how do you handle that?

Bill Condon: “I think it’s typical of any movie, honestly.”

But this was two movies shot together.

Bill Condon: “Not really. It’s one movie that’s a really long, very long 250-page script. I mean, the break…it just continues, you know what I mean? It wasn’t as complicated as you might think. Harder for Kristen, I think, who had to be vampire in the morning and teenage girl at night. I don’t know. I found it a very typical kind of movie experience.”

Why did you even want to take this on in the first place?

Bill Condon: [Laughing] “That’s a tough one. A lot of reasons. I started out in horror movies. I wanted to do one again. I wanted to do something in the genre. Even the romantic melodrama aspect of it really appealed to me. I liked the book a lot. I think I liked the idea that there was this relationship with the audience and that there are people who are so into it. I think that was a big, big draw.”

Laura from the Lexicon as well as several other fansite reps were invited to see a few bits of the film and talks to Bill Condon last summer. Condon mentions this is in the interview.

Did you have to deal with many fans on the set for this one?

Bill Condon: “I did. I had little interchanges with them, and then you get so busy, it’s like you don’t have that much time to check in on all that. But we had a set visit I believe. Certainly in the editing room, it was a great day when the major blogs came in. That was fun.”

Did they give you any input?

Bill Condon: “They did actually! Someone caught a misspelling on the invitation, which I won’t tell you about, that not even Stephenie Meyer had seen. So that was cool. It was interesting. It was impressive because they were completely like hawks and they could see everything.”

Read more at About.com